Art Journal: Day 6 Distress Ink

I have a huge stack of distress ink pads. I loved using them for scrapbooking because they blend so well and you can do so much with them. However I have never used them as watercolors, until tonight.

Materials used:
Distress Ink in tea dye, pine needles, barn door and black soot
Water spritzer
Contact paper
Flower punch
Foam pad
Computer print out
Pop-up glue dots
Pebbles Earth tone chalk

 I swiped the ink pads across my crafters mat several times.

 I spritzed water over the ink until beads of color formed.

 I laid my page over the ink and gently swirled it around. Not too much though. I didn't want the colors to be muddy.

Not being an overly patient person I used a heat gun to speed up the drying process. Be careful that your colors don't run. I found a big roll of contact paper lying around the house and thought I'd give it a try as a resist. It works very well...at least with the distress ink. It took minimal color.

 I saved the negatives from the punches to use later.

 I used the punched flowers to cover the prettiest parts of the watercolor.

A little black soot distress ink went over the top. 

 I really like how this turned out. I started to used a damp paper towel to wipe of the little bit of ink on the contact paper. But I ended up pulling up some of the ink from the paper as well so I just removed the contact paper.

 I printed out a quote and trimmed it down.

 I crumbled up the paper before adding chalk to the top of it. The chalk and the crumple gave it a bit of a worn look. Yes I could have used distress ink, but I feel the chalk gave it a lighter look.

I have to admit it was difficult to over any part of the page with the quote. All in all I feel really proud of this page.